MaKe sHifT TheAteR: RENT
by yayne
Summary: after Benny gets a strange necklace in the mail, the bohos find themselfs thrown into our own time. to add to this, the same necklace leads them to a theater putting on a production of, you guessed it, RENT!
1. Prolouge

Prologue

It was yet another boring day in the lives of the bohemian's lives as they all hung around Roger and Marks loft doing absolutely nothing. Roger and Mimi were sitting closely together wile the former was strumming a few cords from his new song. Maureen and Joanne weren't speaking again, so they were sitting on opposite sides of the room, bored out of their minds. Angel was sitting on Collins lap wile humming some song she heard on the radio. And as usual, Mark was recording the whole boring scene.

Finally, the tense silence was broken as they heard some footsteps outside on the stairs. Then the door slid open, revealing Benny standing there.

"hey Benny," Mark greeted him as he entered their home. "What brings you away from Grey's?"

"I justed wanted to see you guys," he told them as he closed the sliding door behind him. "I'm still your friend, right?"

"As long as we dont have to pay rent," Roger said as he put down him guitar and put his arm around Mimi.

"I have something to show you," Benny said as he reached into his pocket. he pulled out a crumpled letter and a small leather pouch.

"What is it?" Maureen asked, finally interested in what Benny was saying and not on a spider that was currently spinning a web.

"Its a strange letter instructing me to give this pouch to my closest friends," he explained as he help up the pouch. "I dont know who sent it, there's no return adress."

"Whats inside?" Angel asked. Benny threw the bag over to her and was easily caught. She opened it up and let the small object inside fall into her open palm.

"Its a necklace!" she she squeeled as she held it up for everyone to see. The necklace itself was a simple ribbon with a bow where it meets the pendant. It's pendant was one of those Yin-Yang symbols, and in the center it had a small silver heart.

"this is where you loose me," Mark said as he put down his camera. "Why would some anomynous person send you a necklace to give to us?"

"The letter said something was supposed to happen," Benny explained as he took a second look at the paper.

"What's supposed to happen?" Collins asked as he eyed the necklace.

"It didn't say."

"Is this some kind of joke?" Joanne asked, realising everyones attention was now on Benny.

"I don't know, sounds like it though."

"Well this sounds all very strange," Maureen said as she got up and looked closely at the necklace. "Is this thing supposed to do something?"

"Well, lets see," Angel began running her hands through the little symbol. Her hand went onto the silver heart and pressed down on it.

Everything went black.

A/N so I was informed that I accidentally uploaded the wrong document when I first posted this, so I hope I do it right this time.

2nd A/N i'm going back and rewriting the whole story so it goes better with the musical and not the movie.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The next thing the bohos (and Benny) knew, they had hit the filthy ground of a narrow alleyway. They all groaned as they tried to collect themselves off the ground and brush off some of the mud and dirt that got stuck on their clothing and skin. Living in New York for long forced them to get used to getting a bit dirty one and a while.

"What just happened?" Mark asked as he wiped the lens of his camera with his legendary scarf.

"I don't know," Roger said as he helped Mimi up and grabbed his guitar.

"Where are we?" Collins asked as he searched around for his sunglasses, which were now useless since the moon was rising. This was extraordinary, when they were in their loft just a moment ago, the sun was shining through the filthy windows. Now it was night and all the streetlamps were lighting up.

"We're in Times Square," Benny said as he looked up. They all looked in the same direction he was and saw that they were not too far away from the square itself. In the distance, they could make out some of the sights and sounds this part of New York could offer.

"How could we be in Times Square?" Joanne asked. "How could we come from the lower east side all the way to Times Square in just a moment?"

"Well, it has to do with this," Angel held up the yin-yang heart necklace to her friends.

"What exactly did that letter read?" Mark asked Benny as he wound up his camera, ready to record what was going on.

"Let's see," he pulled out the envelope and took out the letter from inside. He unfolded it and tried to read it in the dark.

"This is bizarre," he said as he took a closer look at it.

"What?" they all asked at the same time.

"It said before that I had to take the leather pouch to my friends, but now it says we must find a match to it."

"A match?" Maureen said. "Why would we need to find a match?"

"It says it will help us find our way back home," he explained as he pocketed the paper once more.

"They just took us from our home," Joanne stated. "Why would they give us instructions to send us back just like that?"

"Or how about they just say 'go here and do this and you will be back at the loft'?" Roger suggested sarcastically.

"Maybe this will be a learning experience?" Collins offered. "You know how back in summer camp that you would have a team and have to survive in the forrest for a few days night just a knife and some rope?"

"I remember that!" Roger said. "I remember that trip Collins, Mark and I were all forced to go on during middle school. this stupid summer camp in the woods that forced us to go out into the forrest and expect 3 13 year olds to survive on berries and burnt fish."

"Yeah," Collins said. "I ended up having to carry around Mark after he hurt his foot, and how you burned your hand while trying to lite a fire. Maybe this is like that, learning how to work together to get back home in the dark in the middle of New York city."

"I dont know about you guys," Joanne said, "but im not up for this 'learning experience' right now."

"Same here," Benny said. "I have a lot of work to do that needs to be donw by tomorrow."

"Just think of this as an adventure," Maureen told them. "An adventure through the concrete jungle as we look for a replica of this necklace!"

Everyone else just sighed, this was going to be a long night.

"Lets get searching for this duplicate," Collins said as he walked towards the mouth of the alleyway. After taking a few steps, his foot stepped on something oddly shaped. He took a step back and knelt down to see what he just stepped on. It was his lost sunglasses, sitting on a resently abandond newpaper. He picked up both objects and glanced at the paper was he put his glasses in his pocket. When he saw the date on the paper, he gasped and nearly dropped it in shock.

"Whats wrong honey?" Angel asked as she put her hand on her lovers shoulder.

"Look at the date..." Collins said as he passed her the paper. She took it and looked at the printed date in the corner.

"It's January 20th…" she said aloud.

"Yeah, we traveled in time about two days in a future," Joanne stated. "Big whoop."

"2009."

"What??" they all yelled together.

"Guys, its 19 years in the future," she said as he passed the paper around. "We jumped from 1990 to 2009."

"19 years?" Maureen gasped as she almost fell back. "That's almost a life time!"

"We have to get back!" Angel said as she twiddled with the necklace. "We need to find the match to this ASAP!"

"And that's what we are going to do honey," Collins said to his lover as he looked around at all the bright, neon signs. "We just need to think of a place where a magical necklace duplicate would be hiding."

"Can anyone think of a place?" Maureen asked.

Everyone just shook their heads. Without any idea of what to do next, they started walking towards the square, hoping some idea of what to do would come to them. They soon found themselfs in the heart of Manhatten, where gigantic billboards and TV screens advertised all types of stage shows and movies. There were names they never heard of, and some shows they have never seen in their whole life. This was so strange to them, jumping almost 20 years in the future.

"Ooh look honey!" Angel said as she pointed to a small blackish sign on top of some building.

"What is it?" Collins asked, being sort of confused at the moment.

"It's a sign for the 'Phantom of the Opera'! I love that show!"

"That's very nice, be we have to pay attention to were we are going with all these people walking around us." Collins took her hand and tried to keep up with his friends.

Then, something much unexpected happened. A small group of girls, who had stared at Maureen for just a few seconds, then started to call out an unfamiliar name.

"Idina Menzel!"

A/N CLIFFHANGER!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Idina Menzel!"

"Oh shit," Maureen said as the girls began to run towards her. She turned around and began running for her life, knowing that nothing good would come of this situation. It was amazing that she was able to get by all the pedestrians in the square, since even at night it's crowded. And it was also a miracle that the other bohos were able to keep up with her.

"IDINA!!" they cried as they whipped out some autograph books and pens. "IDINA! IDINA!"

"Who are they talking about?" Angel said as she tried to run in her high heels.

"I don't know," Collins said as he tried to keep track of were the drama queen was running. "I don't know anybody famous that might look like her."

It seemed that these crazy fan girls were gaining speed on her. So Maureen did a bit of quick thinking and after a few blocks, she took a sharp turn into another street. About half of the group of girls kept on running one way while the other half just kept on her trail.

"How are they doing this?" Mo asked as she looked around for another way to shake them off. "This can't get any worse!"

Oh, it could.

It seemed that another group of girls started to scream, but this time for Benny.

"TAYE DIGGS!" they screamed as Benny tried to shake off his own crowd. "TAYE! TAYE!!"

"Are all girls from this century insane?" Rodger yelled as he tried to steady his guitar on his back.

"You asked the same thing about the girls from our time," Mimi said as she pulled the hood to her jacket over her head. If the chances were that both Maureen and Benny looked like these famous people, what are the chances that the other boho's looked like celebrities?

Now getting tired of running for his life, Benny thought quickly as he spotted a fire escape that was on the side of an old apartment building. He ran ahead of the two groups of fans and jumped on the bottom latter. He climbed up and pulled up the latter so they couldn't after chase him.

But then he thought of Maureen, he saw her running for her life just a few blocks away and he couldn't just stay up there and just let her be mobbed. So as she caught up to him, he reached out his hand and pulled her up the fire escape with ease. Within moments, all the fans had lost interest in chasing them and dispersed.

"You- you saved me?" Mo asked as she tried to catch her breath.

"Why not?" he smiled. "We're friends, right?"

"I guess," she said smiling at him.

The rest of the boho's caught up with them as they calmed down from the chase. They hoped that this wouldnt happen again while they were here.

"How are you guys doing?" Mark asked as he looked up at Mo and Benny.

"We're fine," the drama queen called down to them. "Just a bit worn out."

"All we need to do now is to find a place to sleep," Collins said as he looked around for a clock. It seemed that they had been running for longer than they thought, since it was getting really late and getting more dangerous to be about in the streets. It doesn't matter what year or place, a person should never walk the streets at night. Unless they're a prostitute, but that's a whole other story.

"I'm scared," Mimi said as she leaned on Roger. "Even in our own time I haven't been in this part of New York. There could be all kinds of bad people here wanting to get a piece of this former stripper."

"Don't worry," Roger calmed her. "It's going to be alright, I bet the worst person out here is a guy like The Man. And if we do meet a guy like that bothering us, we can just beat the shit out of him."

Mimi, along with some of the others, began to laugh at the joke.

"Now, we just need to find somewhere to sleep for the night," Joanne said as she pulled her coat on tighter. It was getting a lot colder out.

"But where?" Roger asked. "We don't have money for a hotel, at least not all of us, and we have no clue where a homeless shelter is."

"Here," Benny pointed at a for rent sign on the window of the apartment building they stood next to. "We can spend the night in an unoccupied room and in the morning we sneak out and look for the duplicate of the necklace. Chances are that whoever has the other one might give us a place to sleep tomorrow night. It's as simple as that."

"Sounds like a good plan to me," Angel said. Everyone nodded in agreement.

So for the next half hour, the group looked for an unlocked window to one of the empty apartments to sneak into. After a little bit of time, Collins finally found one big enough to fit them all through. They all snuck in as quietly as they could and found the place didn't look that bad.

They were in a bedroom, a few cobwebs here or there with some dust on the floor. It was completely lacking furnishings and seemed to have been that way for a long wile. That was a good sign; it showed no one would be in there anytime soon.

"It may not be the Plaza Hotel, but it's the best we can do," Benny said as he wiped off some dirt from his shoes.

After this big eventful day, being thrown through time, realizing they have been thrown through time, and being chased by two large mobs of girls, all the Boho's seemed to just all collapse at the same time. Within moments they were all deeply asleep, maybe dreaming of where they were going to be lead to in the morning. Or maybe that they would just wake up back in Roger and Marks loft and figuring they had just dreamt up the whole ordeal. Or maybe they dreamed that they were a purple version of superman chasing after a talking shark in an ocean of pudding, you know dreams are different from person to person.

But they were jerked out of their dreams as they heard the click of a door unlocking from an adjacent room. They all saw that it was the morning, and that they were going to have some visitors come through.

A/N: I'm sorry that this is so late; I'm just a bit behind on all my stuff right now. But I have to tell you this, before I introduce the theater stuff, I have to complete another fan fiction since that one intersects this one a little bit. Again, I'm sorry about that…


	4. Chapter 3

(AN: sorry I haven't updated in like… a long time, but I haven't been feeling real drawn towards writing anything recently. Since I just back from an 11 day trip to Italy and Greece, I just need some down time to relax and to recooperate.)

Disclaimer: I AM THE GHOST OF JONATHAN LARSON!! I OWN EVERYTHING!! j/k, I own nothing, but I wish I owned Angel

Chapter 3

"What are we going to do?" Maureen whispered to her friends as they all began to freak out. "Someone is going to walk in here, see us, then call the cops on us!"

"We have to hide!" Roger whispered to all of his friends. They all frantically looked around for any place that could conceal them from sight, since they didn't have time to get _every one_ out the window and onto the fire escape. The only two places in the room that they could hide in were the small, walk in closet and the connecting bathroom.

Collins, Angel, and Mark all ran into the closet, Benny, Maureen, and Joanne ran into the bathroom, and Roger and Mimi were able to slip through the window and hide on the fire escape. They all waited in anticipation for this showing to get over with, which seemed to take annoyingly long. But they knew it was coming to a close when they heard the two voices coming closer and closer to this room.

Finally, the realtor opened the master bedroom and led in a young woman… who looked EXACTLY like Maureen! Down to the last wave in her hair, to the wide shape of her mouth, and the shape of her eyes, they could have been at identical twins, if not mirror images.

"Now in here Mrs. Menzel," the realtor said to her. "This is the master bedroom. It has a nicely sized walk in closet and a lovely bathroom. Would you like to take a look at them?"

Everyone held their breath, praying to all kinds of gods, saints, or prophets to save them from being caught.

"_God, Jesus, Allah, Muhammad, Buddha, Vishnu, Gandhi, Zeus, anybody help us_!" Collins thought to himself as he clung to Angel's hand.

"I don't think so," Mrs. Menzel said as she looked around. "I need to get going, I have to meet my husband for brunch."

Everyone let out a quiet breath, releaved that they didnt have to get involved with the cops.

"Can I say just one more thing before you leave?" the realtor asked Menzel. All the boho's seemed to silently groan, wishing they could just leave so they could get out of there.

"Go ahead," she said, probably knowing what she was going to say.

"I am just a huge fan of yours!" she squealed happily. "I saw you perform as Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway and I just thought you were so wonderful! Too bad you broke your rib on the last performance you were doing in that production."

"It is sad, but I do have to get going now," she said wile walking towards the door. "My husband or I will call about what we think of this place tomorrow."

"Alright," the realtor said. "Here's my card with all my numbers on it, and I will be waiting for your call." Finally, they both left.

All the bohemians (and the yuppie) had to wait for what seemed like hours until they were sure they the two women had finally left the building and it was safe to come out. When they were sure, everyone quickly burst out of their hiding places and out of the apartment window.

When free, they didn't think twice about running like mad men/woman all the way over to Central Park, where they knew they could get some rest from the big city.

--

TIME INTERMISSION!!

--

They were able to venture to Central Park with ease. No one seemed to chase after them like madmen wile calling out an unfamiliar name like the other day, which made them all very happy campers. When they finally arrived, they found this nice shady part for them to sit down and relax in, which is what they needed from the 'almost being caught squatting' incident that morning. The sun warmed them up on this chilly day and the grass was dry enough for them to sit down on and not get soaked through to the skin.

"I don't know about you guys," Collins said as he sat down on the grass and leaned back onto a tree. "But I want to get the hell back to our own time and loft."

"We all want to get back to our own year and crappy housing," Mark said wile winding up his camera and shot some people walking through the park. "But we need to find the duplicate to this stupid necklace."

"But it's like looking for a needle in a haystack," Joanne said. "There must be thousands of jewelry stores in New York, and who says we can search each one asking if they had something like that."

"But who says it's in a jewelry store?" Angel said. Everyone looked over to her, thinking that maybe she was onto something.

"The necklace was sent through the mail to Benny, who brought it to us, which took us to the future," she explained. "Each step included traveling, and either it came to us, or it forced us to go. I would think that since that this is happening to us involuntarily, the duplicate will come to us."

"As sharp as a knife, isn't she?" Collins laughed as he embraced her.

"Angel does have a point," Mimi said. "Since whoever is doing this to us is making sure we fallow the steps, they will send us the duplicate so we don't just give up and get settled here."

"But how will it get to us?" Maureen asked.

"Yeah, it can't just drop out of the sky and right into our laps," Mark said as he got a quick shot of the cloudy winter sky.

Out of nowhere, a black and gold orb fell off of a tree branch and landed right on Marks lap. He looked down in fright, not knowing what just fell out of the sky and right onto him. But as he was just about to get up and run, it let out the cutest little sound.

"Meow," it said as it uncurled from its spherical shape. It was a cat. It was a black and gold long haired cat, with cute little white boot paws.

As Mark figured out that this little animal must have climbed the trees branch and then lost its footing and fell, it started to rub his head against his hand and camera, which made it purr happily. But Mark began to sneeze, since he had an allergy to cats.

"Someone takes this thing away from me!" he yelled as he scrambled away from it and started trying to get all of the fur it shed onto him off of his clothing.

"Calm down, darling," Angel said as she picked up the cat and placed it in her lap. "She's not a thing; she's just a cute little kitty.

"I think you mean 'he'," Benny corrected. Angel quickly looked down between the cats legs and realized her mistake.

"I guess animals are like humans, they can sometimes fool others into thinking they are the opposite gender," Angel (and every one else) laughed as she scratched him under the chin.

"Does he have a collar?" Joanne asked her. "He looks like a pure bred, so he must belong to a breeder."

She felt around his neck and immediately located a collar that was tied around it. She then moved it around so that she could get a good look at the tag. But when she did, all the color was lost from her face and her happy expression dropped.

"Mark was wrong, it did just fall out of the sky," she then held up the cat and collar to show that the tag…

Was a smaller duplicate of the necklace.


End file.
